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House Committee Proposes New Cloak-and-dagger Agency

March 04, 1996

The U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee proposed on Monday a sweeping overhaul of American intelligence agencies, including creation of a separate Clandestine Service for cloak-and-dagger spy operations.

The Central Intelligence Agency would lose the spy operations but take charge of intelligence analysis.

Under the plan, the National Security Agency (NSA), which eavesdrops on global communications, and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which operates U.S. spy satellites, would be eliminated, and their operations would be combined under new agencies.

Committee leaders said the goal of the overhaul is to cut and streamline a dozen separate U.S. intelligence agencies into a flexible operation able to focus on crises in the next century.

Besides creating the new Clandestine Services agency, putting the CIA in charge of intelligence analysis reports and eliminating the NSA and NRO, the House committee's plan would:

-- Create a new Technical Collection Agency that would take over signal and communications intelligence from the NSA, satellite intelligence from the NRO and monitoring of other countries' weapons testing from the Central Management Office.

-- Create a new Technology Development Office to take over research and development of spy satellites and other spying systems.

-- Create a director of military intelligence, who would be in charge of military services' intelligence but be answerable to the director of central intelligence.